Islamic State fighters shot and killed a Navy SEAL during an "extremely heavy, extremely intense" firefight with U.S. forces and Kurdish Peshmerga troops in northern Iraq Tuesday, military officials and a trainer who witnessed the fighting told Fox News.
The unnamed service member was advising Peshmerga forces but was less than 2 miles behind the front lines in the town of Tel Askuf, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. A defense official told Fox News the service member was killed by small arms fire, likely from an AK-47 rifle.

"The Peshmerga were trying to hold the line, but Navy SEALS – at least 20 – came in and pounded the s--- out of ISIS," military trainer Matthew Van Dyke told Fox News, saying that "scores" of Islamic State militants died. Van Dyke and three U.S. veterans were training Assyrian Christian forces battling ISIS in the region.

"ISIS kept sending in suicide bombers, SEALs pounded them and the [U.S.] airstrikes did a lot to help. Bullets flying everywhere, machine gun fire from ISIS, really intense firefight," Van Dyke added. He said three Christian fighters and several Peshmerga were also hurt.

Navy SEALs joined the fight roughly an hour after it started, "heroically" beating back ISIS, according to Van Dyke. He said the SEALs kept fighting until ammunition ran low.

"It is a combat death, of course. And a very sad loss," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, referring to the Navy SEAL. Carter was speaking in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was attending a ceremony installing a new commander of U.S. European Command. "It shows you the serious fight that we have to wage in Iraq."

Personnel Contributions to Countering ISIS | Graphiq
The town of Tel Askuf is located about 20 miles north of ISIS' Iraqi hub of Mosul. Despite a push from the Obama administration to accelerate the fight against ISIS, senior defense officials say they do not believe Mosul will fall this year.

Still, Van Dyke says he believes ISIS "won’t be able to sustain continued losses like that."

Three U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq as part of the ground fight against the ISIS terror group. The last American death happened in March, when U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin was killed in a rocket attack on a firebase in northern Iraq.

This past October, Delta Force Master Sgt. Josh Wheeler was killed during a rescue mission that freed as many as 70 ISIS hostages.

The latest death came following the deployment of a 200-person special operations task force to Irbil, southeast of Mosul, which Carter first announced in December. Last week, President Obama approved the deployment of 450 additional U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Baghdad last week to exhort leaders of the government in Iraq to resolve internal political strife and concentrate on the effort to defeat ISIS.
Carter, likewise, visited Baghdad recently. The Obama administration has been pressing the effort against ISIS, which has been slowed down in its quest to overrun Iraq.

There are now roughly 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.

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Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Truth is treason in the empire of lies. ~ Ron Paul
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I don't think 'the left' is against fighting ISIS, is it? probably some pacifist groups on the far left but is the idea of combating ISIS in general a mainstream position?

What happened though, to the right-wing narrative that the administration is doing nothing to combat ISIS or indeed that Obama is facilitating the group? Sounds a far cry from the above reported 'pounding the shit out of them'.

But don't let facts get in the way.

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If its based in Islam it is islamic since they are muslims - Dat1111

If that was the case please EXPLAIN HUMAN HISTORY prior to collective societies

There aren't too many better ways to go than greasing your way to the afterlife with the gore of those legions sent there before you by your own hand. Make you a place with the ribs from their cages, and a pillow from the pile of their hearts. Light the halls with the burning of their fat, and drink your fill of victory from cups made of their skulls. Sleep well.

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He couldn't win from day 1. My predictions are always accurate.
--- inevitab1e (the baked potato)
Some of you are thinking that you won't fight. Others, that you can't fight. They all say that, until they're out there....
--- Proximo, Gladiator
"...and I have an angry mob, that will roast and eat your 'men of quality' in the ashes of the Senate House" --- Marc Antony, HBO's ROME

There aren't too many better ways to go than greasing your way to the afterlife with the gore of those legions sent there before you by your own hand. Make you a place with the ribs from their cages, and a pillow from the pile of their hearts. Light the halls with the burning of their fat, and drink your fill of victory from cups made of their skulls. Sleep well.